cuts to entitlement programs are necessary due
to rising federal deficits.
A slip of the lip
can sink ships!
Did Mitch McConnell
just cut Bill Nelson a huge break
by foreshadowing Medicare cuts?
The
Senate Majority leader said changes to entitlements are on the horizon
to cut
deficits on the rise since Trump's tax cut.
ST. PETERSBURG
Sen. Bill Nelson thinks the top Republican in
the U.S. Senate revealed something
so politically fraught to Floridians,
he
might as well have just donated to his reelection campaign.
Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell said this week that cuts to entitlement programs
Washington-speak for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security
are necessary due
to rising federal deficits.
"It's a
bipartisan problem:
unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by
doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the
future," the Kentucky Republican
Nelson doesn't
expect that will go over well in Florida,
home to 1.9 million Medicare
recipients
and
where nearly one-in-five residents retirement age or older.
"Mitch
McConnell made a big mistake yesterday:
he gave away his real intentions,"
Nelson said Wednesday.
"You let the seniors of this state know the
Majority Leader
is thinking about cutting Social Security and Medicare,
they're
not going to be too happy."
Nelson is facing
Gov. Rick Scott in one of the country's most anticipated Senate races.
McConnell was
responding to a Treasury Department report that
The Treasury estimated that the deficit would
grow again next year and exceed $1 trillion by 2020
A main driver of the rising
deficits is the massive tax cut that President Donald Trump and Republicans
pushed through Congress last year.
The new tax law lowered income taxes for
most Americans and slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to just 21
percent, the largest one-time rate cut in U.S. history for the nation's largest
companies.
Trump promised the
tax cut would pay for itself, but while the economy continues to see healthy
growth and fewer unemployed Americans, that hasn't been the case.
Instead,
government economists say
the new tax system is driving up the deficit with
much more pace.